Tag: patience

Divine unfoldment

Published on by lindseybiggs6 Comments

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Goodness and progress are always unfolding in our lives, but sometimes we may really want to see how it’s all going to turn out! That’s the nature of the human mind.

The human mind is opposed to God and must be put off, as St. Paul declares.

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God isn’t an anthropomorphic “old man” high in the sky, though we often use human terms to describe Him. Really God is more of an infinite, all-embracing, impartial, divine Love and Substance that is the Source of all. This Substance is what makes up you and me, our divine essence and nature.

I love seeing all the flowers blossom in spring. They are fantastic and the aroma is wonderful! Seeing a tree filled with hundreds of delicate blossoms helps me to see God’s love, who gives us those tiny little buds and blossoms for Her delight.

It is Love which paints the petal with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with starry gems, and covers earth with loveliness.

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We don’t worry that the buds won’t open up; we trust they will open in just the right way and at just the right time. So it is with life. When we are praying for something, we can trust that spiritual desire to God. We can listen to God telling us that we are loved, that we are made in Her likeness to shine Her beautiful light, and patiently wait for Love to unfold Her blessing in our lives.

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

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Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 151:24-26
Ibid, p. 247:24
Isaiah 55:12 NIV

Repost: Communication

Published on by lindseybiggsLeave a comment

This blog post by “Daring to live in love! The alternate economy” has some great ideas and guidelines for communication.

Week 8: COMMUNICATION — No blah blah.

Is it kind?

Think: Gossip. Building yourself up at someone else’s expense. Mean-spirited, oppressive put downs. Spreading rumors.

Is it necessary?

‘Unnecessary’ would include: Talking just to hear yourself talk. Trying to always have the last word. Bragging. Meaning to shock others. Self-indulgent blah blah.

Is it true?

Obvious, right? Lying. Misrepresenting. Tearing down your opponent. Demonizing ‘the other’.

Does it improve upon the silence?

There are times when it’s not possible to be better than simply silent: Being ‘present’ to someone dying, or in pain. Holding someone’s confidence. Refraining when in emotional turmoil. Not rising to the bait. Considering: Do I really know what’s best??

True love

Published on by lindseybiggsLeave a comment


Last night, as I was going to bed, I was praying to know how to “love my neighbor” better. 

The answer that came to me is to love my neighbor (and myself) spiritually. 

“In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, — self-will, self-justification, and self-love, — which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death.” (Eddy, Science and Health, p. 242)

Self-will (or human wilfulness), self-justification (or feeling the need to justify what you are doing perhaps because it isn’t right) and self-love are actually the opposite of Love, divine, true Love. 

A well-known, and probably the best written statement on Love comes from I Corinthians 13:

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly,but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (New Revised Standard Version)

I think of this wonderful statement of love as a comparison between self-love (thinking we are the best and indulging our material personality) versus spiritual love, the Love which is God itself. 

We have all felt moved, touched or inspired by Love, I’m sure. Perhaps it was in helping a friend, saying just the right thing that meant so much to someone, or in a healing we had. As we erase the “adamant of error” from our consciousness we become lighter, clearer and a better transparency for divine Love, the love that heals, saves and uplifts.